Extremism in Defense of Liberty

In 2007, USA Today reported. “Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It’s expanding by about $1.4 billion a day – or nearly $1 million a minute. What’s that mean to you? It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States.” Three years later Congress has raised the national debt ceiling yet again — to an unprecedented and even more astronomical $14 trillion. From healthcare to climate change, stimulus to war, virtually every conversation coming out of today’s Washington, DC-regardless of which party is in power — is about how much money our government is going to spend next.

Not surprisingly, countless Americans are now realizing that the greatest threat to their life, liberty and property is their government. Describing such people as “deranged,” New York Times columnist Frank Rich seems to think the greatest danger on the horizon is not necessarily big government-but “extremists” hell-bent on fighting it. Writes Rich:

(M)ost Tea Party groups have no affiliation with the G.O.P. despite the party’s ham-handed efforts to co-opt them. The more we learn about the Tea Partiers, the more we can see why. They loathe John McCain and the free-spending, TARP-tainted presidency of George W. Bush. They really do hate all of Washington, and if they hate Obama more than the Republican establishment, it’s only by a hair or two. The Tea Partiers want to eliminate most government agencies, starting with the Fed and the I.R.S., and end spending on entitlement programs. They are not to be confused with the Party of No holding forth in Washington – a party that, after all, is now positioning itself as a defender of Medicare spending. What we are talking about here is the Party of No Government at All.

What Rich derisively calls the “Party of No Government at All,” has been a healthy and long overdue reaction to what we have now — the Party of Any-and-All Government. Flustered over the rise of anti-Washington “extremism,” establishment men like Rich continue to ignore that our current, virtually omnipotent federal government is pretty damn extreme itself-that is, if the U.S. Constitution is still any gauge on what American government should be and not simply the status quo sympathies of a NYT‘s columnist.

Rich paints a picture in which the supposedly respectable conservative movement of the recent past has been hijacked by the ghost of John Birch and the specter of Ron Paul. But Rich has it exactly backward-there has been no mainstream movement advocating for limited government conservatism for decades, only the GOP using conservative rhetoric as a marketing tool to win elections. The conservative movement isn’t being hijacked-it’s being resuscitated. Rich notices the difference; he just doesn’t like it:

The distinction between the Tea Party movement and the official G.O.P. is real, and we ignore it at our peril. While Washington is fixated on the natterings of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michael Steele and the presumed 2012 Republican presidential front-runner, Mitt Romney, these and the other leaders of the Party of No are anathema or irrelevant to most Tea Partiers. Indeed, McConnell, Romney and company may prove largely irrelevant to the overall political dynamic taking hold in America right now. The old G.O.P. guard has no discernible national constituency beyond the scattered, often impotent remnants of aging country club Republicanism. The passion on the right has migrated almost entirely to the Tea Party’s counterconservatism.

As the old GOP guard scrambles to put rank-and-file conservatives back in line so they can vote for Republicans like Mitt Romney who might save Medicare or spend trillions on another war, tea partiers, libertarians, and constitutionalists of all stripes should take solace in the fact that despite their critics–radical loyalty to limited government principles has long been a hallmark of American conservatism. Or as the original right-wing extremist, Barry Goldwater explained in his famous 1960 book The Conscience of a Conservative:

The turn will come when we entrust the conduct of our affairs to the men who understand that their first duty as public officials is to divest themselves of the power that they have been given. It will come when Americans, in hundreds of communities throughout the nation, decide to put the man in office who is pledged to enforce the Constitution and restore the Republic. Who will proclaim in a campaign speech: ‘I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel the old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.’

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8 Responses to Extremism in Defense of Liberty

It wasn’t until very recently that I’ve understood the principles that Democrats and Republicans have manipulated to gain and protect power. At one time, I would have called myself left-leaning but greater knowledge has allowed me to shed the limitations of that definition. At the root of what most people call “liberalism” or “progressivism” is a belief in the collective, that the group is stronger, safer and healthier than the individual. Far from being a “socialist” idea, collectives are part of everyday life… family, churches, communities, etc. The collective has been a key to the survival of Man for eons. In the best of circumstances, government would represent the will of the collective called the United States of America. It’s guiding vision would be the Constitution and the belief that the collective good should not be attained by the NEEDLESS sacrifice of the individual. Indeed, choice is every individual’s fundamental right and force or coercion to attain an individual’s sacrifice is wrong. No man has the right to take from another without his consent even if it supposedly benefits the collective.

And this is where the fundamental premise of conservatism comes in… the concept of freedom. At its most basic level, “freedom” means freedom from force or coercion. A true conservative stands on the principle that every man should be allowed to make his own choices. He should not be compelled or forced to sacrifice for a “greater good” that he does not recognize and is not willing to give to of his own free will. A true conservative also understands that his rights end where another’s begins and respects the rights of others as he respects his own.

Democrats have polluted the idea of the collective and used it to justify increasing the power of a government that clearly no longer works in the interests of the people. Republicans have polluted the idea of freedom and used it to justify increasing the power of a corporate elite that has almost always operated against the interests of the individual. Both roads lead to tyranny.

I believe in the collective… in families and communities and their capacity to provide safety, support and comfort to their members. I also believe in freedom and that any entity that is powerful enough to compel, force or coerce you against your will, including so-called “law enforcement,” is dangerous to the individual’s freedom. In an ideal situation, the collective protects and enforces its own laws. I hope to one day live in a world where those ideals are respected.

Romney believes in dumping all retirees and wants them off pension rolls, the only way he will save medicare is by removing all the people who get benefits. The only lives in a war that will be saved by Mitt is his own sons which refused to serve in the military.

The choice is becoming quite clear, we become brainwashed slaves of big brother that many will be quite happy about, OR we revolt and restablish the Constitution and freedom in America and regain the society the Founders established.